The effects of transportation in antismoking advertisement narratives on attitudes towards smoking

Transportation Theory offers insight into methods of creating effective advertiseing for health promotion. Individuals who are highly transported (immersed) into a narrative are presumably more likely than those less transported to experience a change in attitudes and beliefs consistent with story themes. Narratives allow for transportation, whereas rhetoric, another form of advertising, fails to effectively do so. Second, it was hypothesized that an advertisement's tone (strongly negative, mildly negative, or positive) would also affect level of transportation. With a 2x3 factorial design, undergraduate participants were instructed either to immerse themselves into the antismoking narrative (high transportation) or to count words they felt individuals at a fourth grade reading level would find difficult (low transportation). The tone of the narrative was also manipulated. There was no statistically significant difference in attitudes toward smoking between individuals in the high and low transportation groups; however participants who were highly transported, despite their assigned transportation condition, were more likely to be in favour of a smoke-free lifestyle than those who were less transported. There was no significant effect of tone on level of transportation.